Today we gather to give honor
and glory to God.Today I have been
asked to speak to you about the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy
Trinity.It is my honor to do so.

We will begin at the point
after Baptism when we decide for ourselves to reach for our God.The Holy Spirit has been with us since we put
our toes into the water and decided for God.Without the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we can’t even form well the
desire to convert.He gives us the
inspiration, He keeps giving us the little nudges which we look at and say ‘I
really need to change’.So he begins
that with us, but for some reason, the Third Person of the Trinity is the
hardest to understand, or come into a very close relationship with.It is true for everybody, but once the
relationship is formed, it’s like being at the top of a hill and turning around
and seeing that you were never without Him the whole time, but as you’re
progressing, you don’t see Him.

About three weeks ago, I was
praying and it was one of those moments when the Holy Spirit showed me as if
looking into a very clear glass and you can see how things have been and you
can see how they can be because of this relationship.So I said ‘O Holy One, please let me be able
to share with others what you are showing me.’Well, less than a week later I was told this is what I was going to get
to do, so I was very happy to do that, but then I asked Him how I go about
doing this, because I went for years going to conferences and they would speak
of the Holy Spirit and I would walk out, I knew a lot, and I felt nothing.So I prayed and prayed and said ‘You are
really going to have to help me with this, otherwise it’s just going to be
words.’

I would like to pray one
prayer before we start.It’s a very old
prayer that is used in the Eastern Church, but it is from the very first
century.

O,
Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere present and fill
all things, Treasury of Blessings and Giver of Life, come and dwell within
us.Cleanse us of all stain and save our
souls, O Thou gracious Lord.

When I was taught in grade
school about the Holy Spirit, they said He was the Third Person of the Trinity,
and then began to speak of Him as ‘It’.‘It’
is a dove, ‘It’ is a light, ‘It’ is a rainbow, ‘It’ is fire, and promptly at
that age you stop recognizing the Holy Spirit as a person and He became a thing
and not a person.They never said to us,
in a way that I could understand, that He is Love.They never explained to me what Love
was.Again, it was things that you did
for other people, or God did for us, but they never said what Love was, or Who
Love was because Love is not an ‘It’.Love is a Person, it is our Thrice Holy God.Love is Life.Love is a heat and a warmth that penetrates all living things and makes
all things burst with beauty.All the
attributes of God filter through the Eternal Love.All He has created was one spontaneous burst
of Love.He perseveres us in this
Love.When He says He in dwells within
us, we are indwelled with a living Being, and when we indwell in Him, it is
persons together in a relationship that can’t be broken.

What God planned for His
children was to learn to live His Way.The Lord said ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’.We were to begin from day one walking in the
Way of God so that when we pass to Him at death, physical life bursts into true
Life.We melt into the Eternal Love, but
somehow our understanding becomes fragmented.There is only one God, but three Persons.All have the same attributes infinitely, but
each Person does show forth certain attributes in a greater way when they deal
with us although it is infinitely being done and only one God is doing it.The Holy Spirit heard my prayer and said
‘First tell them I am Love.’He teaches
us; He is a Teacher.He begins teaching
us the Ways of God and to recognize God in our life.He is the One that is constantly focusing our
attention.Even those who are in the
world, every once in a while get zapped by the Holy Spirit in ways that they
have to turn around and look at things differently.He gives us strength.We never think of that because He is made to
seem somewhat willy-nilly.He is always
described as the gentle One, the One Who works in silence, and He does, but
Love is a red-hot flame; it’s a white flame - that is the kind of love that God
is.It melts everything.He fills us and melts us and molds us.Remember the song ‘He melts us and molds
us’?He melts all the garbage that we
fill ourselves with; He cleanses us and then He takes us and, if we are willing
to allow Him, He begins to mold and shape us into the creature that He created
us to be.

At the last Intrepid meeting,
we started the young adults with the three first questions in the
Catechism.‘Who made me?Who is God?Why did He make me?’Those are
the three questions that we all have to deal with in our life.It is the three questions that every human
being on this earth ask themselves.If
there is not someone greater than myself, and if there is not a reason for this
life, then life is a cruel joke.That’s
where the despair that is filling the earth is coming from, because they don’t
know where to go to answer their questions.

The Holy Spirit teaches
us.He teaches us to believe; He teaches
us to trust.All the ups and downs that
happen to us each day, all the trials that enter our lives and the sorrows that
come our way are really lessons, and if God was not holding us, wrapped around
us, we would not survive a lot of the trial that come our way, but out of every
trial good will come if we allow God to show us what the good is.You cannot despair if you understand that God
is Good, God is always Good.This is
what the Holy Spirit teaches us and He teaches us to trust in that and when we
can trust in it, then we can truly place ourselves in the Father’s Hands and
let Him move us where we need to go on our journey because we are pilgrims in
this world.We are told that over and
over again; ‘You do not belong in this world.The earth and everything in it is beautiful, but what we call the world
no Christian is a part of.We are
pilgrims moving from point A to get to point B.God gave us this time and all the good things on the earth to come to
know, love and serve Him.In coming to
know, love and serve Him, which is what the Holy Spirit teaches us how to do,
we become whole in ourselves.We become
what God created us to be before we started throwing all the mud within
ourselves through sin; what the world throws at us that we aren’t responsible
for but does affect us.Even the little
things in our life from the time we are born, the time we first start school,
how other children treat us, what our parents say to us, what they don’t say to
us, how a teacher will react to you, all this filters into you, and it guides
how you are formed, but when you can learn to abandon to God, this the Holy
Spirit begins removing, healing.That is
where spiritual, mental and physical healing comes from.Now all things are not going to be cured
instantly.Not all things are going to
be taken from you because some crosses are lessons, some crosses are your way
to salvation; without them you may not reach salvation.I have told several of the groups, when
you’re praying for people to be cured from cancer, from all these things that
are horrible, be careful what you are praying for.Always pray that God’s Will is being done
because this may be their salvation or the salvation of their family members
and if that cross were to be taken away, where would they be, where would they
end up?So it is not always charity to
demand, it is charity to ask.Some go to
Fatima, to Lourdes,
to every healing service, and become disappointed and angry with God every time
the healing doesn’t happen.That is not
being a child of God because you are not trusting the Father to do what is
good.If it were not efficacious for
this to be happening at this moment, He would immediately take it away because
He would never put on our shoulders something that was not of some value.We would not do that to our children and He
is the Perfect Father, but sometimes the answer is ‘You have to carry this for
a while’ and sometimes the answer is ‘This is what is going to get you your
crown in Heaven.’Your crown comes in
how you say Father, I believe, I trust, I abandon; blessed be Your Will.When you can hold that in your heart, and
you’re not going to hold it all the time because you have your good days and
your bad days, but when you can turn around and say Father, blessed be your
will, you’re well on your spiritual journey because you’ve learned to allow the
Holy Spirit to strengthen, to hold you to the Trinity.